THANKSGIVING

 Dear God, our Holy Father, to whom we owe our very existence and the heart and spirit you planted within us, giving us the ability to return your love, I pray you will put gratitude foremost in our hearts for so many good and wonderful things you give us daily.

In Your provision for our physical and mental well-being, your presence and grace enabling and strengthening us for any and all challenges we meet daily, we learn new things about You and learn to walk, knowing you will catch us when we stumble and set us again onto the path You chose for us. Thank You, Father, for great and small problems in our path, unacknowledged gifts which cause us to look up for help and learn something new. Without these challenges, we tend to believe we can handle life on our own.

This magnificent world, though fallen through human failure, still retains beauty and evidence of ever-diligent watch care over each one of us, revealing Your yearning for our recognition and fellowship with our Creator and Savior.

This Christian nation was given to our forefathers, who prayed and fought for a safe place to live and freely serve You, yet most of us carelessly undervalue this freedom today, believing somehow it is our birthright requiring little from us for its continued existence, and which through continued neglect we are losing to Your enemy, bit by bit, without seeing it is ours only through our relation to our Father in heaven. I thank You for Your continued patience with our apparent disregard of this monumental gift.

I am grateful for my family, given to me as a pale foreshadowing of the parental love from my Holy Father. Imperfect as are even the best relationships on the earth, they give us a glimmer of the perfect loving Parent waiting to welcome us into His eternal family.

Most of all, Father, Thanksgiving is given in honor to King Jesus, who left His throne for a time and lived among us, proving that a perfect life is only possible with God’s presence within and demonstrating perfect, infinite love by substituting His death for the one mankind earned by turning away.

For all these things and more, Lord, make us truly grateful.